


The Benefit of Experience

by morganya



Category: Moonrise Kingdom (2012)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-11
Updated: 2013-12-11
Packaged: 2018-01-03 07:32:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,293
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1067754
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/morganya/pseuds/morganya
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Suzy performs a balancing act.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Benefit of Experience

**Author's Note:**

  * For [themyscirans](https://archiveofourown.org/users/themyscirans/gifts).



> Thanks to [Diaphenia](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Diaphenia/pseuds/Diaphenia) for editing and suggestions.

Suzy's new client gives her the up and down. He's been polite and wary since the nurse wheeled him down from the children's ward to the office. Suzy gives him a minute to get settled. She's already gone through his reports – eleven year old boy, massive stroke followed by loss of mobility and severe weakness of the left side – but she wants him to get to know her at the same time she's getting to know him.

When he finally meets her eyes, she says, "Do you have any questions for me, Gregory?"

He thinks about it. Finally he says, "I guess I'd like to know what you have in store for me." His speech is slurred and his reactions are delayed, but otherwise he's watching her warily, instinctively self-protective.

"That's what I thought we'd figure out," Suzy says. "Did they tell you anything upstairs?"

"All they said was occupational therapy," Gregory says. He looks at her. "I don't have an occupation."

"Well," Suzy says. "What I do is talk to kids about the things that they like to do and that are important to them, and then we find ways to make it easier to do those things."

"Who comes in here? Is it all kids like me?"

"Some of them. I see some kids who have had strokes, some who have been in accidents, some with things that they were born with."

"That sounds like a lot. Do they all live at the hospital?"

"Some of them. Others come in from elsewhere."

"Do you help them?"

"I like to try to make things easier. I'd like everyone who comes in to be proud of themselves."

Gregory considers. He relaxes a little. "Oh. That sounds okay, I guess."

"So what's important to you?"

Gregory gives the question the proper weight. Finally he says, "I like baseball. Liked. My left side doesn't work so well anymore. I'd like to do something about that."

"That's very workable," Suzy says.

She's hoping that this will be the best track for him; baseball's a good way to get both sides working together again. She's going to assess where he is and then spend some time getting a plan together for him after he goes back upstairs.

They chuck fuzzy balls at the big target in the back of the office for a while. Gregory gets frustrated when he doesn't perform up to his standards at first, but it only takes a little encouragement to get him focused again. When the nurse comes to wheel him back upstairs, he says, "We can do this again, right?"

"Definitely," she says, and when he's gone she goes to write out her report.

*****

Stephen's father comes to see her on Tuesday afternoon. She already knows what he's going to say before he sits down; he's been saying the same thing since she started working with Stephen.

Stephen's father doesn't like her. She's never bothered to ask why exactly. It might be her age or her voice or her name, that she's Suzy rather than Sue or Susan. Whatever the reason, she accepts the dislike as a matter of course.

She understands some of her clients' parents: they sit down with her and their fear and guilt and bewilderment shatters into the room. She knows when they're looking for hard facts, the precise measurement of their child's journey broken down into reassuring science, and when they just want to know if the child is happy or not. That, she understands.

People like Stephen's father, she doesn't understand. He wants hard facts and then doesn't accept them. He demands progress in all things, without considering his child. Maybe Stephen, with his damaged brain and unpredictable body, just doesn't fit into his father's plan of life. 

In the end, she has no alliance with Stephen's father. She can be polite, but that's as far as she'll go.

"I don't believe he's working up to his full potential," Stephen's father tells her.

"He's working very hard," she says. "Did you receive a copy of my report on his progress? He's doing very well."

"Miss Bishop, just because Stephen can hold a spoon does not mean he's 'doing very well.'"

"Eight months ago he couldn't hold anything," she says. "I'm sorry you don't see that."

"You work for me, Miss Bishop, and –"

"Pardon me," she says, "but technically I work for Stephen."

He stares at her. She stares back.

"If you don't think I'm working up to my full potential," she says, "then you are of course free to let the hospital know. They can try to find another occupational therapist for Stephen."

He gets up. "You're a rude young lady."

"Yes, I suppose I am, sir," she says.

*****

Kelly wants to write a book. They've been trying to work for twenty minutes, but Kelly's heart isn't in it, which is unusual. Suzy waits until another half-hearted pass at the exercise has gone by and then asks, "What's up, kid?"

Kelly dithers for a minute and then says, "Do people like me write stories? People with cerebral palsy, I mean?"

"Yes," Suzy says. "I've met some of them."

"How much time does that take?"

"I don't know exactly. I think it depends on how they set things up."

"My mom says that I can't waste time on stories. People think things about people like me. If you don't show them that you're working, they'll think you're lazy."

"People do think that sometimes," she says, because when she first went into this line of work she'd promised herself that she'd never lie to her clients. "But it doesn't have to be one thing or another. They notice when you're doing exactly what you like to do too."

"Really?"

"Really."

"Well, how do I do what I want and what I'm supposed to do?"

There are a lot of different ways she can answer. Finally she says, "There are a lot of hours in the day. Maybe we could make a schedule and see when you have time for writing or whatever you like."

"And that can be for whatever I want?"

"Whatever you want."

"That's good," Kelly says. "But. What if I don't know what to write about?"

"Maybe write the kind of story you like to read? What are your favorite books?"

Kelly looks embarrassed. "I don't have a lot of books at my house. My mom says when she was my age, she read improving books. I don't know what those are."

"I think I might have a few books I liked to read when I was your age around somewhere. Should I bring them in for you, just to see if that helps you get started?"

"Yes, please."

"All right then," she says, and then they go back to working.

When she gets back to her apartment, she calls Joyce. Normally she checks in on Sundays, but she's feeling like she needs to do it now. Thankfully Joyce is home. She says, "Please tell me you're not busy."

Joyce says, "I was just watching the news. Some godawful tragedy happened at Jonestown and I need a break. What's going on?"

"One of my clients said something today and it made me think about – about when I was a kid. It was so innocuous at first, but it just led into –"

"Memories of the bad old days?"

"Yes."

"Sometimes it's okay to think about where you came from," Joyce says. "To see how it brought you to this point."

"It doesn't feel like that."

"It isn't nice to have feelings, is it?"

"No, it's awful."

"Are you doing all right otherwise?"

"I think so. I don't want to go out, anyway."

"Okay, sweet pea. Do you have a plan for the rest of the night?"

"I'm going to watch _The Incredible Hulk_ and do some work and make dinner."

"That sounds good. Call me if you need to."

She hangs up. She shuts her eyes and takes a breath, reminding herself of where she's standing, her place in the world.

*****

She still remembers the way she used to be. Sometimes she feels it viscerally, the swirling anger and confusion that she used to walk around in, and it always leaves her shaky afterwards. Other times she can look back with the benefit of experience and put order to the chaos.

She sees herself in her clients sometimes. Tina goes into meltdown during the session, unable to navigate within the structure that's been placed on her, and it gets to the point that Suzy needs to restrain her to keep her from hurting herself or destroying the office.

Tina's eyes are full of panic, unconscious and uncontrollable, and Suzy thinks, somewhere in the part of her brain that isn't focused on calming Tina down, _Yes, I remember this._

Tina finally quiets. They both take a moment to survey the damage.

"I know there'll be consequences," Tina says.

"Yes," she says. "Yes, there are always consequences."

*****

She goes to a meeting on Friday after work. She prefers to listen rather than share, and she usually leaves feeling more clear-headed and stronger.

Afterwards she stops to talk with Sandra for a minute before she heads home. Sandra's been coming to this meeting for a couple of months but she doesn't know how long she's been coming in general.

"Sorting my life out is a pain," Sandra tells her. "How'd you do it?"

The question surprises her. She doesn't really think of her life as particularly organized, only as a series of days that happen one after the after, each one containing something new. She laughs and tells Sandra, "If I knew the answer to that, I'd have the answers to everything."

*****

Sam comes into town, and Saturday is the first time their schedules have allowed them to see each other. Sam lives out in the wilds of New Hampshire with his family, so they don't get a chance to meet in person that often; luckily they got into the habit of letter writing early, so it's easy to pick up where they left off. She takes him to her favorite German restaurant for dinner. He has sauerbraten and porter; she has jaeger schnitzel and lemonade.

He fills her in on what's going on in the world of forensic photography, and the conference he's spent the last three days at. She worries about Sam's job sometimes, that it means dealing with tragedy every day; Sam's already had to deal with a lot in his life. Sam seems to like it though, so she probably should just let it go.

Sam brought pictures with him: some of him and Katharine, some from Annie's birthday party and some of Emily, the new baby. It's an odd feeling to look at Sam and see the boy he was under the surface of the man he is now, and it makes her wonder how she appears to him.

"Katharine was teasing me about coming," Sam says. "She said she felt strange sending me off to meet my first wife."

"I hope Annie didn't overhear that," she says, laughing. "That would be difficult to explain."

"She only likes trucks and dolls. She couldn't care less about Dad when he wasn't Dad."

"That's the way it goes, isn't it?" she says. "It's hard to imagine."

"She goes over to the Captain's house sometimes and pesters him for stories about when he was a kid. Grandpa's past is way more interesting than her dad's, I guess."

"I don't doubt it."

They both left New Penzance years ago, physically if not mentally. Sam had school and then a job and then a wife and babies, and Suzy had school and then things got a little muddled for a while. Sam knows this. It's a relief that he's seen her at her best and her worst over the years, and though he may not understand it, he never went away.

"How's work?" he asks her.

"Busy as ever," she says. "Keeps me on my toes."

"I heard something about the burnout rate for occupational therapists," he says. "Is it high?"

"No higher than anything else," she says. "If the rest of your life is pretty balanced, it's manageable."

"Is it? For you?" He looks seriously at her, blinking behind his glasses.

She smiles. "I'm doing my best. So far, it seems to work."

*****

Sunday is always a quiet day. She calls Sam at the hotel to say goodbye before he heads back home, makes herself some tea and then calls her mother.

Her mother still lives in New Penzance. Suzy supposes she's doing all right; Lionel and Murray and Rudy are always up to something, keeping her busy, and she still commutes back and forth to work. If she minds her life as a widow, she's never told Suzy about it.

She still worries about her mother sometimes, but her mother still worries about her, so that makes them even.

"How's the week been?" her mother asks.

"Pretty good," she says. "Sam Shakusky was here, and my clients are doing okay."

"So you're feeling all right up there, Suzy-bean?"

"Of course, Counselor," she says. "When am I not?"

For the most part, she's forgiven her mother for what happened when she was a kid. Her father, rest his soul, is a different story, but then he always was. She hopes her mother has forgiven herself.

"I'll tell the boys you called," her mother says. "They'll be sorry they missed you."

"I'll talk to you next week, Counselor," Suzy says.

"Love you, Suzy-bean," her mother says, and they hang up.

Suzy takes her tea over to the window and looks over the city. She stays still for a moment, enjoying the quiet, ready for the days to follow.


End file.
